Trying Out Laravel

• 2018/12/29

I gave Laravel a spin

PHP frameworks are hot again, so I touched PHP for the first time in years.

Environment

Windows 10 / PHP 7.2.6 / Laravel 5.7.0.

Install the package manager

• PHP itself does not ship with a package manager, so grab one separately.
• Download the installer from here.
  • Composer is the de facto package manager for PHP.
• After installation, run composer -v in Command Prompt. Seeing the version means success.

Create and boot a Laravel app

• Decide on a directory name and run composer create-project laravel/laravel --prefer-dist laravel to scaffold a Laravel app under laravel/ (--prefer-dist controls where Composer downloads packages from).
• cd laravel to enter the project.
• Start the Laravel development server:

php artisan serve

(artisan is Laravel’s CLI.)

• Access http://localhost:8000/ and check that the Laravel welcome page shows up.

Wrap-up

• Like Rails, Laravel lets you get something running very quickly.
• This time I only did a connectivity check, but a quick search shows it can generate a lot of things via the CLI just like Rails.
• Being comfortable with Laravel should broaden my options. Because it is an MVC framework like Rails, anyone who understands MVC should be able to pick it up fairly easily.